TenBrink Tech Technology | Life

So, some of you haven’t listened to the advice…

…and now PSS is likely getting slammed by phone calls.

For the last time, you Exchange Admin peoples…heads up on an architecture change affecting Exchange 2000/2003 after October 2005 which is now being included in all further hotfixes and service packs after that date.

And if you haven’t heard by now, you need to read it.

Comments on Exchange 2007 Admin Interface

I attended the Improved Exchange System Manager for Exchange “12” Technet Webcast on Tuesday and just had a couple notes and thoughts about the direction the interface is taking in Ex07.

I am absolutely, 100%, against the increased user management that has been put into ESM. It seems to me to be a regression to the days where Exchange maintained a separate directory.

One of the advantages of moving Exchange to AD for its directory service was that administration was performed from a single source for most low-level tasks. Using ADUC, the front-line and help desk personnel could perform the user Adds/Moves/Changes from a single console.

I would have like to seen ADUC extended to include additional Exchange information (like mailbox size, public folder administration, etc). Instead, we are falling back to having to having 2 MMC snap-ins loaded and to perform a task and will need to educate the administrators on when to use each console.

Take an instance of adding a new user. Today, we have one place. ADUC (or scripts for you advanced people). Through ADUC, the help desk folks follow a wizard that creates the user, mailbox, and away they go. To disconnect a user or mailbox, they can do that all through ADUC.

Now ESM can add users to AD, through a separate console and different wizard. Since PowerShell actually performs all the ESM tasks, now we have three interfaces to add a new user…to AD…and mail-enable that user. Which – in my thinking – should have nothing to do with Exchange administration.

One of the demonstrations was to quickly change the Department attribute of a whole bunch of mailboxes using PS. Ok, great. Now tell me why that is an Exchange admin’s problem? That is a field that should be updated by an identity management solution – maybe powered by PS commandlets for Active Directory.

If we wanted to add AD functionality to PowerShell, why go half-way providing what’s needed for Exchange to do modifications to AD and give us all the commandlets in PS to do AD administration? You know, sites, services, subnets, object manipulation, schema changes, the full enchilada. Then, on top of that, build the new ESM features – easier filtering, task-based layout, new wizards – and use that for a whole new ADUC management console.

Dare I say it, the perfect domain administration console? Well, part of the way there. Add SMS and some reporting features and we might have something awesome.

Moving on…

I think there was an over-emphasis in the presentation on the power of moving to the MONAD/PS platform for Exchange administration. Sure, this will make our lives much easier, and I’ve been a believer in this from the start. I am an avid user of PS already and use it for Exchange 2003 administration and reporting.

So maybe it is just me being ho-hum about it, and administration is *cool* with PS, but you’ll have to be more compelling in many other areas to make your business case for upgrading.

Oh, and add some tab completion for parameter values if you could before we get to a final version. At least we gained tab completion to parameters in RC1.

One final thing, I have to note Amanda, the presenter, for making her test mailboxes with NHL players and teams. Which begs the question, who is she rooting for in the Stanley Cup Playoffs?

Go Sharks.

Updated Microsoft IT Showcase on Email

Comments to come later after I have digested it, but here is the latest update on how Microsoft IT handles some large volumes of spam.

Linky

Virtual Server 2003 R2 SP1 and Beyond

From a VS blogger:

So what's in Beta 1? Functionally, the main change is the support for Intels VT processors which provides hardware assistance for virtualization support. What does that mean? If you're running on a VT enhanced processor, NON-Windows guests will run much faster as we're no longer performing ring compression as part of the emulated environment (note you can choose to turn VT support off). However, Windows guests will run at parity in terms of performance as we already performing optimal tuning through the use of VM Additions. Windows guests will get a significant boost during the install process though, the time before you have an opportunity to install the VM Additions. The host clustering white paper and the associated VB Script I blogged about back in November last year, this is now included in the box.

Moving forward to what's going to be included in Beta 2, we'll add support for hardware assistance in the AMD chipset (aka Pacifica), integration with Active Directory to allow you to identify VM Host machines in a consistent manner, plus one killer feature (IMHO) - VSS support. This will allow you to take a snapshot of a running VM for backup - something I've had so much feedback from people to put into the product. More details to follow on that closer to the time.

Linky

ActiveX Analyzer Too

How about a tool to analyze your ActiveX deployments for issues related to the KB 912945 update.

Well, here you go.